I once attended an outdoor Fourth of July concert in which the Philadelphia Orchestra played Sousa’s Liberty Bell March. At the appropriate moment, several hundred audience members made that rude noise I’m never sure how to spell. Stupid programming on someone’s part, but hey, there’s a lot of ways to celebrate freedom.

C: Well, I was, uh, sitting quietly, reading all these comments, and I suddenly came over all peckish.

O: Peckish, sir?

C: Esuriant.

O: Eh?

C: ’Ee I were all ’ungry-like!

O: Ah, hungry!

C: In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, ‘a little fermented curd will do the trick’, so, I curtailed my Walpoling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!

I don’t know if Pastis or any of you folks are aware of this, but there is a kink out there for something called “crush videos” that are exactly what it sounds like – close-ups of a shoe (I think a woman’s shoe, never seen one of these myself – honest!) squishing a small animal. If you’re really curious Wikipedia can enlighten you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_videos

I’m sure (I hope) this strip isn’t a subterranean reference to that sort of stuff!